Folk, I have a lute-like-object. It was an EMS lute kit, put together (badly) by a friend of whom I am very fond. He offered it to me when I showed interest (the closest other thing I had to a lute at the time was a guitar.) I took off the top plate and shaved the bowl back to correct for the neck angle, strung it up and it worked well for a fair amount of time, at least for amusement value.
Then moisture and climate got to it and the top plate became three top plate pieces, and the bridge flew off and the nut disappeared. Eventually, I gave it to my father-in-law, who put it back together with epoxy, whynot? Only the bridge came off again. While this wasn't a) a surprise or b) very dismaying, it was, in a way fortuitous. I am starting at the University of Connecticut this fall, and I'll be auditioning for the Collegium Musicum. They have (or at least had) a "theorboed lute", which was broken. (the break was related to the long neck, and although I remember when I saw it in the '80's, I had no idea what could be done about it, I've a few years in a cabinet shop and one of the world's premier 'cello makers as resources now, so I'm not as afraid of undertaking a repair as I might have been.) I had talked to James Bump (who made one of the college's other lutes) about stringing it, and one of the things he had suggested was making new nuts and single-stringing it. With recent researches in theorboes and chitarrones, this seems a reasonable approach. All of which is said because I really want to be able to demonstrate that I could play that theorboed lute as a theorbo when I audition in a few months. I've been working the top six courses as an exercise with my classical guitar restrung (A and D strings replacing b and e strings) tuned double-reentrant, and capoed up five frets, i.e., an A theorbo without diapasons. Now I'm thinking, even with the horrendously short string lengths, to modify this EMS lute-like-thingie, to make it single strung and provide 14 strings. I don't mind tuning it low (unlike my wife, I can change between modern, old, french, or other tunings without problems), and because it's a stopgap, I don't mind if the diapasons aren't optimally resonant. That said, can anyone advise me what would be a good string length to shoot for, what would be a reasonable "pitch standard" (consider it an A theorbo, so state A=XXXhz for the top string, don't bother relating it to A=440!) and what should I be expecting for string spacing at the bridge? All pity for my having an EMS LLO, being nuts, being willing to accept extreme compromises, etc, can be sent to me offlist (tiorbinist at gmail dot com). Reccommendations for a good psychotherapist in my neighborhood to /dev/null. I'm really serious, as evidenced by my previous experiences, which include having made a shot at "getting the feel" for playing baryton by slinging a separate maple board with tuners, nut, string tie-off's and a string "lifter" upside down over my bass viol, with a structure to hold it with the strings against bridges on the viol's top plate, so I could pluck the brass strings on it with my thumb ala baryton, although beside the neck and not under it. It worked well enough to play most of Haydn's Baryton Trios with. raybro -- To get on or off this list see list information at http://www.cs.dartmouth.edu/~wbc/lute-admin/index.html
